


The Fair Wrought House Has Fallen

by grayglube



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Discussion of Abortion, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Rape, Post Battle of The Bastards, Sense of Doom, winter is here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 13:34:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7270357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayglube/pseuds/grayglube
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what they are, this is what they are becoming. He came back lessened and she returned as an effigy of herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably diverge from canon given whatever happens in the finale but I couldn't help writing a Sansa/Jon fic, I forgot to check the more than one chapter box, oops. This will probably have 3 parts.

She knows what whores look like. Mole’s Town was a town of them, for what remained of a town. There was the shrieking cry of a babe, of sickness and hunger, of loneliness. Her mind spins far from puzzling out Littlefinger’s plans, of his betrayal.

 

Brienne helps her to mount and high in her saddle she can see the pallid faces stare at them from behind ragged curtains and warped, cloudy glass “There’s tansy tea here.”

 

“My lady.” Brienne’s face pulls, surprise and then quiet sadness.

 

She pulls the reins of her mount and has it turn, “Find me some and then we ride back.”

* * *

 

The crunch of snow over the frozen ground doesn’t startle her, Brienne’s steps are heavy but carefully placed, each foot moves with purpose, still she turns to make sure it is Brienne. When they stand on the ridge overlooking the land that was once hers and the open field where men will die she speaks, “I've taken the tea and I haven't bleed.”

 

Brienne looks down at her. “That’s good, milady. There was nothing to be rid of.” Brienne smiles, gently, but it’s strained, brittle like the trees’ bare branches.

 

She does not look up to meet Brienne’s concern full-faced. “Or it didn’t work,” her tone edges up, her blood pounds behind her ears and her breathing feels thin and too fast. "I..."

 

When Brienne moves it’s fast and sure, there is a mailed hand reaching for her shoulder, “You’ve been starved and cold and riding, your body is strained. It will come.” Brienne's words are so sure.

 

“I can’t have, I _won’t_ …” The thought is as distressing as giving herself back to Ramsey, it frightens her more than the battle, more than dying, more than what Brienne will do if she takes her own life and leaves the woman behind.

 

“Then we will find a maester.” 

 

She doesn’t quite notice her mouth open on words and speak none of them.

 

Brienne’s face is like stone, formidable, a challenge to anyone who would come between anything Sansa has asked to be done and what Brienne will do for her.

 

She can only nod and trust in Brienne’s steel. “We’ll go back now.”

 

“Yes, my lady.”

* * *

 

He’s something, no longer a man, vicious with a language whose letters are simple brutality. She feels it, like heat, like summer. He looks up, he hears the words she doesn’t speak. She is a lady and cannot ask for what he has taken so freely, another man’s life.

 

She’d regarded him coolly, waiting while his own men and others watched him break open his knuckles on Ramsey’s teeth.

 

He'd wanted to please her, to offer her something. He could feel the weight in her limbs, the dread like rocks in her gut.

 

Something that is no longer a man understands what it is to have a kill stolen by another.

* * *

 

 

There’d been a flare of regret, something breaking and falling away when she thought Jon might kill him there in the yard of the gatehouse.

 

But, Jon doesn’t and she finds something in her that has been stolen, something that isn’t trust but feels close to it, she is not as voiceless as she was.

 

It is something she had not felt with the Boltons, or in the Eyrie, it was something she lost in King’s Landing, something that makes her remember the doll her father gave her that she told him she was too old for playing with.

 

She is grateful when Jon looks up to her and stops hitting the man below him.

* * *

 

She’s cold, he’d thought it when she spoke about Rickon. The coldness in her made her numb to it, even when they brought their brother to them, a grisly token like one of Sansa’s pincushions.

 

He wishes he had listened to her and done the same, let go of the hope that it could be more than just them alive in Winterfell again. He's never felt so keenly as he does next to the cart carrying his brother in that moment that he had gone to the Wall and abandoned them all.

 

When he watches her walk through Winterfell there is no joy in her, there is no happiness, but neither is there the expressionless face of resigning herself to a fate she had no part in choosing. She choose to come home, now she must live again inside walls that will never be as she remembers them before she left them that first-final time.

 

Her grimace lingers long through the day and into the night.

 

She does not sit, she does not rest.

 

She wanders. He watches.

 

Ghost stares from his side at Sansa with her shoulders unhunched, her throat long and white, her pale hands held gently before her.

 

She’s never close enough to hear him speak, he doesn’t try to speak to her, and always there is silence with her steps. She’s still easy to find without having to listen for her footfalls.

 

Something has changed in him, his senses are keener, but it’s as if he is still somewhere in the dark. He _feels_ her in the dark halls of their lost home.

 

He finds her stopped, in the threshold of a room he thinks was Lady Catelyn’s, the one that was rarely used. Their father and her mother rarely slept apart.

 

She doesn’t startle when he says, “They’ll have all the rooms made up soon.”

 

Her face is as stony as Lyanna’s in the crypt below, her chest rises, hitching high and she holds a breath, it does not come out as smoothly as she tries to have it. She is not just some cold thing. She is something wounded.

 

She just stares into the room, there are no words and still he understands he has upset her. Her hand reaches to smooth over the space between Ghost’s ears.

 

When she looks at him he reaches to offer a comforting touch, grasp her shoulder like their father might have, firm and so very proud because she has survived, she is alive. Her skirts brush her legs, like an angry wind and her long plaits sway. She is alarmed, he steps forward and she away and only when he stills does she settle herself, looking back to the room.

 

He does not follow her steps, he follows her eyes and finds the furs covering the bed and the floor, old rushes, and candles burned low in their dishes. It’s a woman’s room but there are no chests and no table or mirror for dressing.

 

“This is where he brought me on our wedding night. He kept it the same for when he’d bring me back to it." She breathes deeply, steadies herself and makes herself something that is no longer flesh to be bruised and cut and touched. "I want you to burn everything in it.”

 

After she’s gone away like a ghost down the hall and turned out of sight he goes in. His hand is steady when he pulls back the furs. Ghost is anxious, he smells the old blood underneath, so does he. It’s soaked down through everything. Her blood and Ramsey’s seed. There are slashes and imprints from the bony parts of a body held down.

 

He finds her at the kennels, he’d have killed him then if she wasn’t already watching him die.

* * *

 

She wasn’t going to watch, something told her it wasn’t right, that it would be common, vulgar to see him die. But, then she was waiting, like an ache lessening, turning warm, like a bath, and then she was watching him hurt and bleed.

* * *

 

There’s still blood on him but there are better things to do. The stink is what he wants to wash away, it’s pushed deep inside his nose, the stink of men dying fouly and horribly. He’d been smothering and the press of it felt like a lover. He got his feet, toes curling and pushing, shoulders bearing weight and his arms too packed to his ribs to be of use, thighs tense and the heavy pull as he tried to breathe.

 

He stood, still tightly stuck in the press but there was blood rushing, tingling through each finger under his gloves and in his boots making his feet heavy, rooting them, and finally pounding in his cock like he’d been ready to fuck death.

* * *

This is what they are, this is what they are becoming.

 

Below Winterfell, where he has laid his brother to rest and see where his father’s bones should lie in repose, he looks at the stone faces of a house that is only half his.

 

He thinks of Sansa, above. He walks until he knows she stands where he is, separated by earth and stone but in the same place all the same.

 

He came back lessened and she returned as an effigy of herself.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little bit of Northern politics. Alys Karstark is from the books but she's such an easy character to tie into things.

 

“Are you awake?” The woman asks him, knelt by the fire to stoke it. Her hair is like blood, like the sun rising, he says a name he’d forgotten somewhere in the dark, between the temporary quiet of sleep and the unwanted waking he can remember a place, rock, water, the taste of a woman, the cold-ice-wet pressing at his knees and her warmth on his fingers, her scent on his beard for days, the different warmth that poured over his arms, the painful sucking breath she took before she succumbed to the same dark that held him more briefly than it takes some men to die in the snow.

 

He startles when she speaks, her face turned to his, soft concern and gentle confusion, “Jon?”

 

It’s a different woman with hair like blood and a dying sun.

 

He licks dampness back to his open mouth and scrubs at his face. “I’m awake.”

 

“You said something, you were dreaming.” Her mouth stitches up, a tired teasing.

 

“Did I?”

 

Her eyes regard him, then finding no answers they slant back to the fire she’s brought up from embers. “There are provisions, from the Vale. We can talk about that tomorrow. Today. Later. At council.”

 

“Council.” He repeats, tasting the word.

 

“That is what it’s called, isn’t it?”

 

He shrugs from his slump, “Wouldn’t know.”

 

Watching her kneel by the fire is surreal, nothing in her posture shows repose, she looks at the fire like a scout taking measure of an army, “It’s just us.”

 

“It’s _you_.” He doesn’t mean to sound so wounded, but the bitterness bleeds through.

 

She rises and sits in the empty chair, he lets his head roll back to watch her, he hasn’t ever seen a Lady, besides her mother, he wonders why it is that she’s seen so much harm, so much rough use. Maybe it’s because it’s the only way to prove she’s not a song, or a dream.

 

“I couldn’t tell you.” She admits, about the raven she sent.

 

“In case he never came.”

 

“Yes.”

 

She weighs his expression when he doesn’t answer, then sighs. “We can’t fight the Vale, Jon. We can’t survive a siege but then,” she turns away, “he’s not expecting me to say ‘no’. He can’t stay here for the Winter. He’ll suggest another marriage. To himself or to Robert Arryn.”

 

“He’ll want to take you South, and leave me here, in Winterfell.” Like a shade of himself, like the bones and statues below.

 

“I’d name you Warden of the North and we’d all have what we want.”

 

“…”

 

“He gave me to the Boltons.” She sucks her teeth and clicks her tongue, “Not sold, gave. He had to because I know what he is. I know what he’s done.”

 

“What will we do?”

 

He doesn’t expect a true answer, he’s thought of her as something far-away and not altogether true and real, but she rises again, stands at the hearth.

 

“Brienne sent a raven. The Lannisters have returned Riverun to the Freys. I would have said if the Vale could reclaim it then I would allow another marriage, but I don’t know who is alive now.” Her hand covers her mouth, weary, her shoulders hunch in her fatigue. “When Brienne comes, we rally the North, the ones who pledge will pledge,” she hangs her head and waves a hand, her hair falls over her expression, he can imagine it, “but we cannot have civil war with the houses that do not. The Vale looks like they support us, that helps.”

 

“What will we do if he won’t leave here without you?”

 

“Winterfell must have its Stark. I can’t leave and no one will take me.”

 

He shuts his eyes and a laughs waits, sticks somewhere between his teeth, “So we wait.”

 

“I told Davos to watch for ravens leaving, Littlefinger will act first. I want you on my Council, and Davos.”

  

* * *

 

 

There is an advisor of House Glover that sits next to one of Mormont men that speaks first, “What are we to discuss? Fealty?”

 

“No.” Sansa says, the word turns the whole hall silent.

 

Jon almost opens his mouth to start but Davos is already about to make words too, words that come out better than his. 

 

But, it’s Sansa who speaks, her voice only growing louder once everyone in the hall has settled into stillness to hear her first soft words, “They called Robb King in the North and he died. Joffery Lannister was King in the South and they say I killed him at his own wedding. Roose Bolton who the Lannisters named Warden of the North was killed by his bastard. Ramsay Snow wanted to be a Bolton and then he wanted Winterfell and then he wanted me and a night past I watched his hounds tear away pieces of him. At his most cruel he could do far worse. My father's son Jon Snow was Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch and sworn brothers murdered him and a dead King’s sorceress brought him back to serve House Stark. Lords, babes, wildings, and kings have died for treachery and because of fear.

 

“How do we know which of us will survive this Winter when the dead reach us and we will have to fight?” She doesn’t rise, she sits, tall and stern in their father’s seat. “We need to fight together. We _have_ fought together. I have been South, they fight themselves, my brother Jon has been North and even the wilding tribes who have never known peace amongst their ranks rallied to get past the Wall.

 

“We don’t have the time to argue about which among us deserves a title or a crown. The Warden of the North has always done justice. Justice now is bringing us all together to stand against what’s coming. The wildlings fight with us. I ask no one to agree with what I have done or what I will do.

 

“I watched the South slaughter my father, call him traitor to the man he called brother. I have seen my brother killed by a man who claimed to be the voice of North out there on the field, I watched my brother Rickon run, I watched him fall, I watched him trampled by a charge because there was no time to clear him from the field.

 

"I begged for mercy, for my father and they made me stare at his head after they put it on a spike. I’ve been given away to be wifed and used for my name there and here. I watched Joffery Baratheon die in his mother’s arms. Traitors, little girls, and kings will all die the same if what's coming is allowed to keep moving.

 

"Begging, swearing oaths, even fealty has no worth now. I will fight and I will die here in Winterfell and no one living or dead will take me from it while I breathe.

 

“So, my Lord, tell House Glover, I don’t need their fealty to fight the dead things that come to take the North from us. Provisions have come from the South, we share them with the houses of the North.”

 

She makes no mention of Baelish, he does not sit at the high table, and he is not smiling at his seat below the half-pace.

 

The hall is silent. Lyanna Mormont bangs the table with her tankard, tiny hands and hard eyes, her men bang their own, other houses follow. It doesn’t mean peace, or even rest, but it’s better than each of them dying alone next to empty, unlit hearths. It’s better than starving, it’s better than the mounds of corpses lying in the open field. It’s better than rising again in the dark night after they’ve been struck down.

 

* * *

 

 

They drag the dead horses from the field and salt the meat. It all tastes the same now to him anyway. Davos praises his sister’s practical oversight, they will need all the meat they can cure for the long nights ahead.

 

“Stannis ate rats when Storm's End was under siege, they boiled leather shoes for soup, horses are far more palatable.”

 

Jon laughs, loudly, Tormund looks thoughtfully confused at his guffaws.

 

Davos grins like a tired old man.

 

* * *

 

 

A girl comes forward, dressed in grey, from the back of the hall. Her face is gaunt and her limbs thin, there are men behind her, rangy and gray-faced. She is announced. “Lady Alys of House Karstark.”

 

No one speaks.

 

“As rightful heir of House Karstark I swear fealty to House Stark in mine and my brother’s name.”

 

The girl had not been in the Hall to hear his sister speak the day before, still Sansa nods, “Your fealty is accepted.” It is not the first house that has come to kneel in front of their father’s seat in the hall.

 

“I ask for my lady’s justice against my Uncle who has forced me into a union with his son that I have protested, and that remains unlawful. I accuse him of breaking his oath to his house and his liege lord my brother whose place I occupy while he is held captive in Maidenpool. I accuse his son Cregan Karstark of crimes against me, my body and those loyal to the rightful heir of House Karstark.”

 

Sansa takes a moment, stares at the girl's sharp features, bruised eyes, winter wind broken lips, “Cregan died in the battle, Lady Karstark, was your Uncle also in the force that was defeated?”

 

“He rides here now, a half-day behind. A large portion of my men turned to keep him from overtaking us. They died so I could make it here to your hall.”

 

Tormund glances towards him at his seated perch on the stair of the half-pace, Jon tips his head to nod, slight and almost unseen. Tormund rises from his bench and moves out of the hall. When he looks up Sansa waves him to go to.

 

When the gates open for the horses just as the night is settling, they take Arnolf Karstark in irons to the hall where Sansa has been waiting. He does not go quietly.

 

Alys Karstark wears a new gown that is too big for her, her hair is plaited and her eyes no longer hold fear. She is barely a woman, she might not have flowered yet Jon thinks.

 

Sansa brings the meal to a close before she speaks. Arnolf Karstark spits on the stones.

 

“You are a castellan, you serve and keep the castle for its Lord your nephew Harrion in his absence, you have no authority to broker a marriage without his knowledge or order,” she starts before she is interrupted.

 

“Roose Bolton approved the union.”

 

“It is contested, and I have already taken the fealty of the heir of House Karstark. I find the union invalid and unlawful, I find you guilty of your other crimes. I am the Warden of the North and the Boltons are dead.”

 

When she waves him away he screams. Davos has him removed from the hall.

 

Sansa says he will be judged by the houses of the North in attendance after he quiets, after a few nights in a cold, small cell. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good stuff to come


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will have at least one more part

She’s watched the red woman ride out, alone from atop the walls.

Jon speaks of trust.

The White Raven has flown back to the citadel.

She must still talk with Baelish.

The scratch of her brother's beard sticks to her skin.

* * *

 

She’s slept in the Lord’s chamber in the same bed where she imagines she was conceived. It comforts her like her mother’s arms when sleep does not come, when she starts with alarm, when she feels a dead man’s phantom touch and smells the stale rot of a corpse breathing next to her.

Ramsay Bolton’s bones are tough, the dogs gnaw at them still.

Someone knocks and it is late and she knows who it is. Brienne has come back and though the ride should have taken two more days and she has slept only in the saddle she stays in the small chamber, next to her by the fire and Sansa is glad. They are too tired to speak so they sit.

“Are you well, milady?”

“It chokes me, like hands, like something down my throat. I watched him die and it wasn’t peace I expected but, I didn’t..., I don’t know what I expected. To sleep, a little. Maybe.”

She finds herself reaching for wine and Brienne does not even gaze at her with silent watchful concern, maybe it’s distaste that isn’t there. Maybe she understands.

Still she lets her hand fall back to her lap, empty. Wine will not make it easier to sleep or her body forget old pains or shame. She thinks of Cersei Lannister. She thinks of Alys Karstark.

“Brienne, who holds Maidenpool?”

“Lord Tarly holds Maidenpool now.”

“We will request he release Harrion Karstark.”

“Do you think he would?”

“What harm is there?”

She knows she would not be alive and whole without Jon, she wonders if Alys fears what it will be to return home without a protector by her side. She wonders if there is a man in Winterfell she might wed, a man with men to fight for her.

* * *

 

At the table she sits with Davos and Jon, and a maester from house Mormont for letters or agreements that might need to be officiated with seals and signed by all hands. Baelish stands.

She is the only one who speaks from the table. Jon looks pale, she thinks, as if he’s gone as sleepless as her for nights since taking Winterfell. Davos watches her speak, waiting for her to need support, or some smuggler's wisdom only he can provide. He will not interrupt unless she looks to him.

“You have come to my aide, as a true friend, I will never be able to repay that. Still, it is winter, the dead are coming, I cannot leave the people I have returned to, I cannot abandon the home I have found peace in.” She smiles and shakes her head, imbuing it with fondness and feminine humility, “It is more than I should ask but the North is my home, I will not see it starve and freeze. Remain as our true friend, help us survive this winter, however long it lasts and by its end I will agree to wed the Vale to the North.”

“Winter can last an age in the north.” Littlefinger points out, his voice like ground rocks, the low growl of an amused animal losing its patience.

“Then we will have remained as true friends and our alliance will only strengthen what the North and the Vale have allowed to crumble and rot for too long because of pettiness and pride, the strife between us must fold to an accord if we are to survive”

* * *

 

Again Jon speaks of trust, and then his words turn harsh. “He will never hold to that if he is what you say he is. He wants you and you’ve told him he’s going to have you if he waits and keeps sending us turnips and old bread.” The birds squawk at him when he slaps at the table.

They stand in the rookery. He’d followed her. The ravens edge up on their perches, they wait for her to hold them to the open air, she’s been waiting for him. Jon’s face is blank, like the freezing sheet of unblemished snow beyond the window. He doesn’t look alive sometimes, nor dead, just the image of a man standing before her, his eyes staring but not seeing.

She wants to see him live again, he was alive when he had Ramsay beneath him and his fists hitting and hitting and hitting, so many times she thought he had killed him. It seemed to be too much for a body to take, she remembers the sound.

It reminded her of what Ramsay would do, having her as brutally as he could manage. It disturbed her then, it does in memory but she thinks of it often despite her disquiet, the sound of his jaw nearly breaking, fists hitting flesh slicked with blood.

“I never told him I would marry him.”

“I was there Sansa.”

“He promised the Vale, the Vale isn’t his. I promised to wed our houses, he serves House Arryn and I will marry Robert Arryn.”

His eyes go wide and then narrow under his creasing brow, she wants to smooth it away, his worry, his uneasiness. She titters at the ravens, they are eager to fly. She’s already attached the letters.

“I’m sending a raven to Lord Royce and Lady Waynwood of the Vale and to my cousin, telling them that we have arrested Baelish on the charge of treason.

“He killed my Aunt Lysa and in fear of him killing Robert I lied, we were to be betrothed then. When I had been used for my purpose Littlefinger took me North while telling me the lie that the Vale would accuse me before Robert and I could ever be married. That I would be killed.

“Then he sold me to monsters to gain the support of the Lannisters who would help him overthrow the Vale. I was stolen from my betrothal as my Aunt Lyanna was by Rhaegar, and when the threat of our force beating the Boltons alone became a clear victory, the Vale came to help the Boltons but found us too strong so he had them fight for us instead. We arrested Baelish on treason, he waits in Winterfell’s cells for the justice of the Vale, is what I wrote, in bigger words, with more weight in the actual letters."

 

Jon looks at her like he doesn’t understand what she’s said or even that she is herself standing in front of him, his mind is jostled by her words and she sees him come to focus in degrees.

“But we haven’t done any of that. That isn't...,"

“The truth? I trust you to go and tell him he is being taken to the cells. Do you trust that I know how to use words to win the North?

 

"I do."

 

* * *

 

“I am so very proud, Sansa. You have no idea how beautiful you are, how brave, how smart you have been.” Petyr's hands reach through the bars to press against her skin, "You've taken what was always meant to be yours." Brienne's steel is like ice cutting ice as it pulls from it's scabbard, a warning shining in the low light of a solitary candle burning down.

“You hated her, my mother. She choose my father and before that my uncle." His face betrays nothing, she goes on. "Jon brought you here, I told him too."

“There is so much left to do, Sansa. If you truly beli…”

"Believe what? That you betrayed me, that you would again, that you will? Yes. I believe that. Men like beautiful things, you know that don't you. It's how you've always accumulated wealth, and the slim power of a man with many whores."

His mouth looks ghoulishly thin, his cheeks filled with shadows. She opens the letter in her hand, _as high as honor._ “By the authority of the Lord of the Vale, you are sentenced to death. There’s more but it says that in absence of your liege lord I, as his betrothed, may see your sentence carried out.”

“How fortunate.”

“There is no moon door but we’ll ride for the Wall.”

“Take the black? Truly, Sansa?”

She smiles at his misunderstanding of what is to happen, what all his power and wealth and bargaining has bought. He's as ignorant as any other hopeful man, waiting for mercy.

 

“Brienne is going to accompany us to the Wall,” she smiles.

“How sensible.”

“Then she’s going to throw you off of it.” His expression breaks like glass after cracks have spun through it, slow, but loud, unjammed doom.

“Oh, did you trust in my tenderness? How unfortunate.”

* * *

 

At the top of the Wall, which looks like the top of the world, a world from a song, beautiful and awful, he isn’t pushed, he slips. 'It was rather undignified,' she'll remark later and Brienne’s face is one of comical disbelief, Tormund gazes at her sworn knight as if he's seen the snow melt and found green underneath. 

Littlefinger falls on the wrong side, sprawled inside the gatehouse kennel where the thatched roof gave way under his falling weight.

Sansa can’t hold her unembellished laugh, it cuts through the shrillness like the yip of a surprised animal. She laughs around her glove, inappropriately amused. “He fell crooked.”

Brienne still wears disbelief in her features, aghast at what has happened at the confusion below, at her lady’s inability to quiet herself of unwanted but not unappreciated joy at the surprise in it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Red wings warning.

 

They have drunk to victory to the bannerman to the wildings and finally in the haze of ale to themselves.

 

He’s never known truths like the ones she tells him by the fire. She came back from the Wall. A place he has sworn never to return to.

 

She pushes back her hair, it’s slipped from its loose plait like water over rocks. He thinks he remembers a place underground.

 

Again. A different woman.

 

Her voice cuts him, brings him home. _You know nothing_.

 

Sansa snorts, unladylike at last, “What does a man like Littlefinger ever really know? A Lord is a father to those who come and kneel before his seat and his banners. A king isn’t much different.”

 

He remembers her smile then, speaking of a dead man she condemned to death with half-truths that were complete falsehoods.

 

“He pretended I was his bastard girl the whole time he imagined fucking me. He was no more man than the mountain of corpses we’re still burning.”

 

He remembers his face warmed by the fire, his groin pulsing as she spoke, her sharp face flushing from sour ale, her hair coming loose.

 

Her giddiness following a man dying had armed him too, even if Litterfinger had been good, even if he hadn’t wronged her, it was Sansa’s joy that had made him look full at her, take in the details of her fine hands, her pale throat, the shadows under her eyes, the part of her lips as she drank, her fatigue glazed eyes and for a moment he’d forgotten they shared the same father.

* * *

 

The march home for the knights of the Vale starts after the night’s freezing wind ebbs, she watches from the gatehouse wall, she can see the direwolf banners, they edge into her vision while they twist in the wind. She can see a raven fly from the rookery, one she has sent out to herald their path.

 

She watches Jon in the yard climbing the stairs to come to her, she has so often seen his face, his brooding brow and his soft grimace that to see the flared wings of his shoulders through his leather jerkin is odd, to watch him swing his fur cloak around over his grown wide shoulders is something she breathes in, makes herself commit to memory.

 

Soon he has come close enough to hear her speak but she looks out on the force of men a horses riding home to wives and children that have yet to be born, ones whose name-days will be this day, she presses her ear to her shoulder and feels her blood throb at her throat. She knows why he has come to her. She speaks first. “A lot can happen before summer comes again. Robert is frail, he has fits. He might grow out of it, he might die.”

 

“And if it comes and he doesn’t die?” Her brother’s voice seems closer than her own skin but when she turns to answer he isn’t looking at her. Her smile is slight, “I’ll have time to make myself undesirable.”

 

“There won’t be enough horse meat left for you plan on getting fat.”

 

His tone belies his humor, he is in a better mood than he has been. Petyr Baelish is dead, he is not the only one made happier by the man’s absence in events, in the North, in the Kingdom of Men. Still, she is wary, she watches half an army march away, “I’ve known hopelessness, Jon. Have you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

She can only grin. “You know nothing.” He startles violently, as if she’s struck him, he stands and stares down at her. He looks haunted. He is a man. He will never understand the word the same way she has experienced it. There is a pride to the knowledge that she has survived worse than he has, he died, she was made dead by careful, experienced hands, she has lived past wanting to die. “You know what it is like to have worse odds, Jon. It is not the same. You know what it means to be outnumbered, to be betrayed.”

 

She imagines, in his silence he is as motionless as the frozen snow when the wind blows.

 

“…”

 

“That is not hopelessness.” She tells him.

 

She could go one, she could speak of King’s Landing. She could speak of being owned. She could speak of false rescues. She could speak of pain that has no end, nor the quiet nothing of darkness that brings peace. She could speak of their father. She could speak of the mob. She could speak of moon gates and knights who are not men. She could speak of ships burning in the night. She could speak of a southern summer and a northern winter. He has come back from the dead but she has prayed to be among its ranks. A banner hanging with the sigil of her house brings no kind oblivion, no oddments and sundries of relief, she still stands alone.

 

She’s been as much since she last saw Arya escape from that final embroidery lesson with their Septa, she tries to remember when before that she last saw their father. He gave her a doll, she saw him many times after that but they seemed obligatory, meaningless, she doesn’t think she looked up from her mirror or her fine stitches to bid him good morrow with true enthusiasm or care.

 

“The Lord of the Vale will die or find another bride before winter is over, but he’ll remember who helped him quiet himself to sleep once his mother was dead.” She thinks that as bad as people may be there is still so much left of who they wanted to be, once. “Robert wanted to be brave. I wanted to be a princess.” She says to the silent field of white beyond Winterfell, “You wanted to be just.” She hears no sound as he moves close, only feels his heat at her side. “Now, I could be Queen. Here. Of snow and starving children.” She scoffs, his expression pulls tightly around his jaw. Still, he is silent.

 

“And,” she stops to turn and stare at him, make his eyes blink and meet hers, to prove he is not yet dead, “you know that justice isn’t always what’s needed. I’m giving Robert his chance to be a great lord and maybe when summer comes he will be disappointed but that comes with being alive.”

 

The wind rises again, the wood supports of the banners smack loudly in the shrill, bone cutting cold. Jon hums, “I thought I knew better than my brothers. A Lord should know better, that is why he is a lord.”

 

He is Lord of Winterfell.

 

“Your watch ended, and _our_ brothers are gone. You are a lord now, we must change or the snow will fall and cover our bones until they are found again in the summer.”

 

* * *

 

 

“You’ve bled.” He gestures, looks back to the fire when she stares at the furs she’s been seated atop of.

 

He looks back when she’s desperately turned away to pull at her skirts, his presence ignored, unimportant, she reaches down and in the fire light there is blood over her fingertips, and it is blood that makes it path down the heart lines of her hand. She breathes and it sounds like a sob.

 

He has risen and she has never known the feeling of relief, the emptying of grief, the startling thankfulness she has not felt even after they’d taken back their home. She wonders if it’s made her lose words because she doesn’t speak until after he has said her name. The sound from her is like the first breath after running through the winter wind, the ice in the air, a half-stolen sound, stuck and left to unfreeze slowly in her mouth, to cut her teeth on. He grasps at her elbows, turns her, he says her name. She might sob, still. The anguish of the last fortnight had seeped down below her bones and had made her heavy.

 

“I was afraid, it hadn’t come for so long.” She inhales and wipes her hand on her skirts, she means to step away, find a girl to come and try to work the stain of her moon blood from the fur but he pulls at her arms and holds her, his arms are sword-strong and his hands have killed men. If he can no longer be tender than she thinks he might be trying now. He holds her tightly, softly, close as a lord would his lady.

 

The leather of his jerkin smells of wood fire, pine and earth, the spice of him. She presses her face there. He doesn’t move, by the time she’s come back to herself to wonder and to press her ear to listen for his heart or to feel him breathe he has unfolded his arms from around her.

 

“I’m still the only bastard here.”

 

They are not kind words and he doesn’t smile when he speaks but she offers back something that is not all grimace.

 

* * *

 

 

They call him the White Wolf, they call her Sansa Red-Stark.

 

There are wilding men who look at her, they leer but from what she seen on men’s faces in the mob, in the Red Keep, in the quiet captivity of the Vale, in her marriage bed, their looks seem less like threats, less like intention, they look like the way men count and measure odd.

 

The women among them appraise too but they do not look at her and sneer, they do not want to maim her for beauty or to make her less for it. They are gruff both before and after they have looked on her from afar or from close.

 

“Red hair, it’s lucky.” Tormund grins, he has a broken tooth, and the bottom row crowds close, it makes him look deranged. Brienne doesn’t quite know how to move near him. Sansa grins when they orbit around each other, one moving close, the other away.

 

When Tormund comes so far forward Brienne never allows herself to step back so he may gain ground, Sansa can praise such resolve, it is hard to imagine one defeating the other. but, she can imagine Brienne falling softly like snow, she can imagine Tormund kneeling like he's found mercy. It is as strange as any intrigue she’s found at a court before, “Luck isn’t always good is it?” She tells Tormund and he smiles, hideously, again, “Good, bad, you’re alive and there are walls and fire and food. Lucky for us all.”

 

His words are insistent.

 

Brienne nods at her side, agreeing and relaxing in the smallest unseen way.

 

Tormund laughs, head tossed back and hands on his waist, a caricature of a man laughing.

 

Sansa wonders if she might ever see the pair of them come to terms, on the field, at each other’s side, in a bed they bind themselves to.

 

* * *

 

 

She has not seen Jon in a day, she had fled, moon blood on her fingers still.

 

He puts her at ease when she offers apologies, she knows how offended men may be by blood they have not spilled themselves, he only raises a shoulder and stares into the fire of her chamber’s hearth. “Girls see more blood than boys.”

 

She bleeds still.

 

“Yes, I guess we do. I’m sorry, still,” she leans close to press her head to his shoulder, nudge him. Like Ghost might in quiet moments. She feels more wolf than girl, more bitch than woman. His movement is fast, like a storm, and his mouth is an attack. His hands guide her, his weight bears her back to the furs.

 

“Jon, no.” She breathes, she had not meant to say no. She tells him so, “Wait, just.”

 

He stills the same.

 

“Don’t be sorry. Don’t be afraid of me.” He asks.

 

“I don’t want it to offend you.” She waits and he softens himself against her.

 

“I’ve been killed by men I’ve called brothers, I’ve been buried under bodies, I’ve broken oaths I pretended that death undid.” Her voice is lost in her mouth where words had been. “What’s blood?” He asks when he's parted from her open mouth. He grins, shadows and shade, he has been dead for a day, she wonders if he knows how many of his men think he is a kind of god. The press of him feels as weighty as the will of one.

 

She feels the throb of discomfort from her womb lessen, unfold into an undulation that becomes warmth and the overstretching of satisfaction. To her anxious attention the slow unstoppable slip of something clotted inside of her, her face flushes hot, sudden shame of her sex and what she can no more stem than the seasons. Jon only grins.

 

“Wolves bleed like they do in summer through the long winter, that’s how he’d know they would allow it.”

 

“What?”

 

He nods at the wolf by the ash-smeared hearth.

 

“Ghost. Even after summer had ended. He’s been mounting wolves beyond the gates, at night.”

 

She does not protest the press of his body, the insistence of his fingers on the laces of her gown, how they pull away the cloth bunched between her legs, the way they find the slickness of her slit under her skirts. Her blood burns on the wood of the fire, a scrap of fabric, a lady's modesty she's had stripped from her.

 

When she reaches with her limbs for purchase, with her throat for words, Ghost licks at her neck, tender over her pulse. “Ah,” it is the rough feel of animal comfort on her skin and Jon’s eyes pull up from where they had fixed themselves to the pink tips of each breast, “You stop that.” Ghost whines, then settles.

 

“He understands you.”

 

His expression belies more than his nod. On his knees he looks away from her half bared body, her stockinged legs and her pale breasts, her swollen mouth and blood he’s smeared on the band of skin above each untethered wool stocking. He thinks she means to send him away, she should. “I don’t know if I want you, but don’t go yet.” There is strange magic amongst them, a Queen, a man from beyond the pale light of life, his white wolf.

 

Soon his mouth is painted in gruesome colors and she sees a wolf with the painted spray of a kill on his fur, she sees Jon between her legs from a place she isn’t, she sees the line of her nose and her bare throat, the rise of her own breasts, she smells the scent of her body, open and readying itself for a man. Then the feel of Jon’s teeth dragging over her sex, gentle and blunt jolts her. She sees only his half-raised eyes. The smear of her moon blood on the bridge of his nose.

 

His tongue is fire, his lips gentle summer warmth, she cries out, ecstatic. It’s not shame, it is relief. It is what she’s been owed as a beautiful girl, as a Queen, as a woman who has been wounded. She stretches to fold hands in his wolf’s fur.

 

She pulls up her legs to draw him slowly and carefully closer, his hands unfold over her thighs, a man’s tenderness and there is only the balmy heat of her cunt, the slow slick sounds of his mouth, the final insistent brutality of a throb inside of her that she uses his wolf’s fur to smother her sobbing release.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Period sex, check it off my list of written kinks.


	5. Chapter 5

They left his tab and glove, his knives in a pile next to the kennels. They sat outside atop a barrel for two days while the dogs chewed his bones before she had Brienne collect them. The hilt of the knife presses a rhythm beside her spine as she rides in the mornings and the evenings. In the yard she thinks about him as she notches arrows and looses them, they miss at the start of Winter and then, soon, they don’t.

 

Then she makes them miss so Robert Arryn may leave Winterfell believing himself a great talent at the bow, he'd not been so far away when she watched his favorite uncle fall from the Wall. Robert had kissed her cheek wetly before he went and promised he'd become a great warrior in his absence. Jon had watched from the walk above, a watcher on the wall as he has always been, wherever he's been.

 

One of the hounds whelped a litter of four, three have continued to survive, one has yet to take suck as the others. The other bitches she’d had killed gently outside the walls so the scent of their blood would not spook the horses.

 

When she retires to but does not sleep in the Lord’s chambers she wonders when the waiting will be done. The days turn slowly.

 

Her appetite is not as it was and the hunger she thinks makes her senses keener and more ready. It is not a time for comfort.

 

Jon sits with her in the hall but rarely does he speak, his eyes betray no heat and his hands do not furtively seek her out in quiet unseen moments.

 

She hawks with Alys Karstark who will leave within the fortnight. There will be a wedding in the Godswood by nightfall.

 

“Are you frightened?”

 

“Of Sigorn?” Alys tuts, she looks smug, if anything.

 

Sansa says nothing, she does not know exactly what she has meant by asking the question, she has met the wilding, he seems more afraid of Alys, a southerner they call her, a _Lady_ , than she is worried of him.

 

Alys only raises her arm for the tawny feathered hawk to settle on. “I told him I didn’t like his beard and he had them shear it all off. His brothers told him his mouth looked like a woman’s,” Alys waits, hesitates to say anything too foul. Sansa nods, “Cunt?” Alys grins, “Yes, cunt.”

 

They laugh together. Lady Brienne fumbles with her reigns, Tormund leans forward in his saddle, used to women who talk like men. He seems more interested in pretending he's looking at the hawk, even when he's staring at Brienne with palsied nerves and an inability to convince himself of the best words to say.

 

Sansa hears him tell Brienne, “His lips are very pink.” Brienne’s face purses, unsure and put-off by the notion, like she’s been greeted by a man who smells badly.

 

Sansa turns and finds Alys trying very hard not to cackle, she thinks of the wedding that will come, tells Alys,“He is taken with you.” And she means it.

 

“He will be a pleasing husband. Strong.”

 

“And true.”

 

Alys Karstark nods and for a girl so young her face makes the day seem like something not entirely real or of being from the world as it is.

 

* * *

 

 

She goes to him before he’s had time to settle for the night, he smells like winter wind, the sharpness of sweat and his leathers, there’s the scent of his horse too, the steel of his sword. The tub sits by the fire and he’s meant to bathe but he sends away the maids so they may speak.

 

“The Dreadfort is mine by rights but I’ll need a castellan.” She has not come to speak of a castle she does not want but that they know they will need.

 

“Have you someone in mind?” He knows she has not come to speak of castle too.

 

“No, not yet. I wondered if you might.”

 

It’s strange to her, not in an uncomfortable way, that there is nothing between them that feels like a wound, it does not hurt to not speak of what they’ve done, a secret like a dream to be kept amongst themselves, something warm to sate them in the cold.

 

“A new name too.”

 

“Yes,” she agrees. She leaves him to call back the maid so he might bathe, they will be expected in the Godswood soon.

 

* * *

 

 

The sky has lightened from an inky pool to the metallic steel dark of near dawn.

 

He is unsleeping, the fire has gone out and his chambers are cold. Brienne waits in the hall, she looks disappointed but not aghast, and Sansa knows the words she might speak, the ones of concern that belay the thought that Sansa goes to Jon in some hope that it will make her of use, it is no such thing she might say if Brienne ever gave voice to the thoughts she will never speak. She goes because the Lord's chambers are not as warm as she knows he would make her feel.

 

It might simply be that Brienne understands, a little at least. They might all die on a day that is not so far from this night, comfort and love and what remains of who they all once were are tenuous things that might give them hope and keep them brave. Brienne stands in the hall, at the end, a silent guardian in the dark, there is nowhere she would not follow.

 

Jon does not stir as she enter, she does not speak. Her feet are pale and cold and under the furs she holds closed she shivers, when she presses her knees on either side of his strong thighs the furs part and whisper glimpses of her skin, his hands don’t move but his mouth parts, his jerkin and tunic pull open under her hands, he does not pull from her curious touch when it takes measure of what was his death. The wounds are bloodless but they haven’t closed. He sits straighter and pulls her closer, his boots scraping loudly on the stone, the chair creaks under their shared weight and all the rest of Winterfell is silent.

 

He looks down at his lap, she wonders of he can feel her heat through his breeches, and she can feel the stern shape of his manhood pressing itself to her.

 

“I could still taste you for days after.” He whispers, hoarse and close enough to her skin to feel like a touch of his hand on her throat, he thumbs her lip and she lets the furs fall over one breast, each pink tip hurts in the chill, they throb while they wait for his mouth.

 

She means to speak but somewhere the silence breaks apart, one horn for riders returning. She slips away, to her feet and he rises to his and pulls his cloak around him, his motions are sure and fast. Outside the door, Brienne stands, men hurry past, Sansa stays inside. There is no distress just dread like a rock in her gut, she will not leave his chambers unseen.

 

Lady Brienne motions her to the door and Sansa trusts. Jon pushes her half outside of his chambers and Brienne announces, “I have brought Lady Sansa from her chambers as you wished, I will guard her until you return with news, your grace.”

 

Men continue on their way, wary of nothing, convinced only of the novelty of a rider in the night and not the King and his half-sister alone before dawn.

 

Jon grunts, a northern sound of assent, “No one goes in.”

 

Brienne nods, eyes downcast, “Your grace.” Jon pushes her back inside the room before he goes, his hand fast and fingers rough from winter and his sword and the reins of his horses press under her furs and between her thighs to feel where he might have been if not for a rider in the night. She gasps and he is gone and Brienne does not even see.

 

Brienne shuts the door. Sansa only nods, silent thanks, she feels her brother's touch still. She kneels by the hearth to build a new fire. Brienne tries to take the task but she only commands the woman to sit. The chair is dwarfed by her, she looks around, head held high and posture more perfect than any Lady, “These are nice chambers.”

 

Sansa only laughs, Brienne chuckles too.

 

“Him and I are no longer the people we used to be, but I don’t know if that means we are good.”

 

“Are you happy, Sansa?” Brienne asks after a long moment as the fire catches.

 

“I’m safe.”

 

Brienne is silent again and then finally when the castle and halls have all come to wake from whatever is happening in the yard she says, “Perhaps that’s enough.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> working on another fic so keep a lookout for that soon


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shameless pimping of my fic, I wrote Lyanna Mormont, Jon Snow ten years later fic http://archiveofourown.org/works/7434107 , we need more snomont fic guys.

Bran tells them tales of themselves.

 

He tells her: “I saw you in a godswood, in Summer with a man dressed in motley and mail who promised to bring you home.”

 

He tells Jon: “I saw you burn a woman you wrapped in furs and walked away from.”

 

Their brother tells them such things before he fades again into a dream, a vision, a truth they don’t know.

 

Meera Reed stands unsure and stiff, her jaw tight and limbs not used to rest she does not look as if she belongs. Sansa is reminded of Brienne when she looks at the girl, a stranger bond by an oath.

 

“We met your Uncle Benjen,” are Meera’s first words following Bran’s retreat into dreams or a past they can no longer chase, or touch.

 

Jon’s brows rise. “He looked good,” Howland Reed’s daughter offers, “For being dead. And, then coming back. I suppose. He said he couldn’t cross the Wall because of the spells.”

 

Sansa does not know what to say more than Jon does and so she settles for a kind nod, polite and appropriate.

 

“He saw you fighting. Fighting your brothers, the bad ones. He wanted to call out.”

 

“Did you tell him not to?” Jon’s voice is full of spite, unresolved and soured like old ale.

 

“My brother told him he couldn’t,” Meera’s sudden softness is pulled away under the clench and tilt of her jaw, “It wasn’t a lie.”

 

“Your brother?” Jon asks but they both know he must be dead, where else would he be she thinks unkindly.

 

“He died so I could save yours.”

 

* * *

 

 

He’s pressed her to the warm stone of the Lord’s chambers. She turns her head and the wet rasp of his mouth and beard rub pink into her skin. She can see the notches on the wood jam of the door for each of her brothers, how tall they used to stand. She cannot breathe and it is not the same as the breathlessness he's brought to her before.

 

He kisses her and it turns as foul as stagnant water, she no longer feels him. She feels the weight of what has been laid upon her before. When she strikes him and he startles. She does not recognize her own grief, her own fear, she’d thought him someone else, someone dead, someone who no longer has a name.

 

"Careful or you'll blacken my eye."

 

Her chest hollows and shakes with the arbitrary beating of her heart, a careless rhythm that hurts. She hastens to recompense, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she is afraid. Not of him, of someone else, someone who is dead, someone she watched die.

 

It is only Jon and she wonders why she was so frightened, there is a man who is dead, who will only ever be dead who haunts her body like a sealed room. He still looks startled, but there'd been heat too, she'd struck him and she does not know if the shadow of the grin was his own or something she'd seen before on a monster's face.

 

Her name is on her bastard brother’s mouth and she knows who she is again, her hands find his, grip tight and unyielding, like a penitent in the sept, “Don’t move, just stay here, like this.” His hands are strong and tight in her own. She puts her head to his throat.

 

She stares at the stone between their feet, breathes, roots herself to where she stands, like a sentinel in the godswood with great root and a thousand branches. She does not say she is alright, she is not and he knows by the way she flinches when his hands meet her skin as they pull her nightrail back to place. He closes it over her breasts, pulls the fall of so it covers her again, knots the ties of it.  She wants badly to force her body back to rights, to the way it used to feel, when it was her own. The thought sticks, like an arrow, like a knife. Her body has always belonged to others. Not since before she flowered was it hers only.

 

She wants to give in equal measure what's been taken, it need not be soft or kind so long as it is a choice she has been allowed to make, one she's bought with blood and grief. She is a Queen now. "Jon, I want you to stay."

 

But he does not look like he agrees. His eyes hadn't left her through the meal in the great hall, she'd felt them, hot, greedy, like a touch and she'd held her knees tighter, her breasts ached, her hands flattened to the table in the way she imagined they would over his unhealing wounds. A warrior who couldn't be killed, a queen's champion.

 

His eyes do not linger now, they search the room, they find her gaze and jump away, as if he's ashamed and angry at himself. He leaves and she is grateful, her limbs still shake, a vibration of old fright that is bone deep, she wonders when she’ll think of Ramsay Bolton a final time.

 

She remembers and she cannot sleep. The gratefulness leaves her like the warmth of the room when he'd left her chambers. She should have commanded him to stay, she is his Queen too.

 

She finds Meera in warm chambers close to her own, and unlike Brienne who has pledged duty and deed and keen mind, Meera drinks mead to ease the passage of day to dark night.

 

Sansa sips from her own cup and listens to what he daughter of her father’s friend tells her of what comes to kill them all.

 

The girl is not pretty but there is grace in her, like a cat, something slinking and silent and watchful. Before she goes she presses a sisterly kiss to Meera's cheek, mostly her cheek. Strength and goodness are like brightness and warmth spiting the Winter that has arrived, like fresh meat and hot bread and strong ale.

 

Sansa knows she has been starved when she stands to close to others like them.

 

* * *

 

 

“Does your father know about your brother?”

 

Meera only takes her meaning as a goodbye, as if she is trying to send her away back to Greywater Watch. It's too dangerous for that anyway.

 

“I swore my protection to your brother, sword, spear, arrow. I protected him beyond the wall, I am not weak. I’m staying. To fight.”

 

“I know.”

 

There is silence that stretches until Meera tells her, “Your brother is Lord of Winterfell.”

 

"Actually, he's a Prince."

 

Meera means to speak but Sansa raises her hands and smiles, “He’s a cripple, Jon’s a bastard, I’m a girl. The whole North won’t stand for only one of us. It has to be us three.”

 

And Howland Reed's daughter nods, understanding and then she swears an oath and Sansa wonders what she's done to deserve such faith. She wonders if Stark holds any meaning, if any name holds meaning, or if it's the memory of what it's bearers have done, who they have saved.

 

* * *

 

 

They sat in her solar, the curtains drawn around her bed but it had still felt as if a third person was there, waiting. He had come unannounced, she'd stood watching the snows fall and he's sat and said: “The Wall is going to fall.”

 

“How?”

 

“I don’t _know_.” The notion seemed to frighten him, something on the edge of where his mind sleeps and wakes, something he no longer remembered.

 

“But you do know.”

 

He'd nodded, struggle in the set of his shoulders and the way his chin had tucked down, “Aye.” She watched him try to remember and find nothing. Finally he'd said, “Tormund knows.”

 

As she asks the Wilding in the stables, next to a horse he is being taught to shoe, he looks sad, not scared. “He means the horn, the one that witch burned with Mance. It wasn’t real.”

 

Sansa thinks of Jon, curling into himself like burning paper, unable to recall the things he has seen or how they once made him feel. She understands his fear and does not understand why the wildings do not share it. “Where is the real horn then?” Her face grows hot with the fear of what she knows must soon come. The truth, the awful knowing, like Bran must know things.

 

Tormund turns from his own thoughts of a man he once called King, a friend who is dead and looks at her, thinks of her question. And slowly, the pinch between his eyes lessens as they open wider, the sudden truth and fear they’ve all been ignoring builds itself up in his stare. He sees it.

 

She tells him, “They have it, that’s why they’re coming now.”

 

“It’s a story.”

 

“It _isn’t_.” She knows it isn’t a story because dragons and eyes watching from the heart tree aren’t stories, because Jon is not simply a story, a man who died and came back.

 

She mirrors Jon’s own disquiet from last they spoke, the understanding that they must go beyond the Wall to fight. If they wait they will lose and they will die in such numbers no one will be able to burn their bodies. She thinks of a world of the dead, of what they would do when done, maybe the world will be dead, maybe they will all know rest. She does not want to rest or to sleep, she only wants to live.

 

“We aren’t any safer here then you were there.”

 

Tormund's mouth purses, tightly, he looks gruff and solid, “For now we are.”

 

 She shakes her head, "Might be we were, maybe we still are, but we won't be."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning I've got some big RL stuff coming up and I might not be updating (I probably will) but I'm not gone just a little busy, it's all good stuff though \o/


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ended up writing about 5 Jonsa oneshots, I have a modern Jonsa AU coming up where Jon is a groundskeeper for the Stark family summer home that needs to get finished before I update my wip again. So, sorry for the wait.

Bran wakes from his dreams while she mends a pair of breeches to better fit Meera. His voice is that of a man’s now, he is no more the boy she remembers leaving broken by his fall and sleeping then too. She knows he has not been so young for so long.

 

“I saw you, praying in the sun.”

 

She looks up and remembers the sun in King's Landing. “I wasn’t praying,” she tells him. His face is so still she wonders if it might crack like ice. “It was the only place I could go where they would not follow.”

 

“I saw you here, in Winterfell.” His voice is a near whisper. “In the godswood. You said ‘I take this man-”

 

She feels made of ice and it might be something inside of her that cracks like ice, something might shatter if she is made to remember. She would rather look towards the war that comes than find the many deaths that came before it waiting behind her like lost ghosts from Old Nan’s tales.

 

“I know the words I spoke, I know what happened after too,” she looks up again and he does not seem so boyish, but neither does he seem a man, his face is expressionless and his eyes look beyond her. She wishes he might look any other way at her, sad or angry or ashamed.

 

“Do you wish to speak of it or might we forget some of what has happened. I might like that.” She says, her voice might as well be the wind speaking because her brother goes on.

 

“I saw you many winters from now, in the godswood, you said ‘I take this man,’ and you are happy.”

 

She does not remember what happiness without cost felt like, Bran’s eyes roll and he slackens down against the pillows again, he is in dreams and Sansa ties a stitch and bites the thread loose.

 

She does not believe she will see another Summer and she does not know if happiness can be found in Winter.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They sit atop their horses and stare at the black towers of the stronghold a league ahead of them

 

 

“It’s yours.”

 

The leather of her glove creaks as she tightens her hold on the reins. “Come, let’s see what is mine now.” She puts heels into her horse and it gallops ahead, her plait slaps across her back, her cloak buffets the wind and she is something made for the long winter in summer colors.

 

The Dreadfort rises like some nightmare of secrets and things stolen and she moves to claim it. She is a Queen, this is her conquest, the gates are already held open wide for her arrival. She raises her chin and dismounts without assist, her split skirts flap, her riding breeches keep only some of the cold from het skin.

 

 

Bran left for the Wall with Meera in the night, breaking from camp without goodbyes, She does not feel the loss as deeply as she thought she would.

 

She wonders if her father felt the same when he left Bran behind in his sick bed, like to die.

 

 

Jon has not spoken on it.

 

They are again the last of Ned Stark’s children.

 

* * *

 

 

The day is spent in the blackened stone hall, there are smaller hearths but inside Dreadfort it is as warm as Winterfell. There is no spring bubbling below, there are only the hot embers of the land's anger, the hot drafts below. There is a smell that creeps up in the corridors but she’s grown used to it by nightfall.

 

Her council has left, the great lords who have also come to discuss he Dreadfort’s position in battle to come too.

 

She drinks from her brother’s cup and wants desperately to wilt into her chair, she does not. Her back aches from a day in the saddle and the unforgiving chair of the high table. She is a Queen of Winter, made of ice and stone, it is not allowable that she should ache.

 

“What will we do the men at arms?"

 

He does not smile. “What would you like to do with them?” It is a true question, he will do as she commands.

 

“When is following orders enough of an excuse?” She asks and he takes back his tankard. “It depends on if you’re going to die if you don’t follow them.”

 

“I don’t trust them.”

 

“Then they should prove themselves.”

 

She lets her gaze run across the long, narrow hall. The half-pace they sit atop is taller than Winterfells. It is a sinister place to rule from. “I’ll pair them with Manderly, they can garrison Eastwatch, they won’t have to take the Black, but if they disobey they can choose that or death.”

 

Jon does sink low in his chair, but he looks neither slovenly nor tired, his limbs are long and he props a boot against the table edge, his chair tilts back and he looks like a wolf.

 

She follows the lines of his limbs with her eyes, her gaze half as bold as a touch.

 

It is not allowable that she should ache for him.

 

“It’s the best you’ll be able to do.”

 

“I could kill them all.” She has not let the idea slip from her hands, she still turns it over her palms like a smooth stone. His eyes gleam, “You should kill the castellan.”

 

“He has been freed of his duties, he’ll have gold for his past service. The rest of the household may find place in the encampment or in the village, there are empty hearths they might mind there.”

 

“That is just.”

 

“They will scrub the black from the walls before they go.” She looks up into the shadows of the high hall and imagines ghouls watching from it.

 

* * *

 

 

She stands in the unemptied war room, flayed men hang everywhere, weapons and hides and the heads taken from great hunts. There is a chamber filled with chests next to the stores, she has found no skins of dead kings, dead Starks.

 

There were only old banners rotten with age from when the Boltons were the Red Kings of Winter and the Starks were Kings of all the North and all of Winter.

 

Those tales are old.

 

She comes upon her brother testing the edges of the swords displayed under glass, none are valyrian steel.

 

“They could have won.” She says, looks around the room and then at the clean snows outside the windows.

 

“They could have.” He agrees, his head bows, not much but it is acknowledgement. He won’t apologize, but he knows he should.

 

“But they didn’t.” There’s steel in her spine and finality in her words.

 

She is Eddard Stark's daughter.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They watch the men train in the yard and she tells him her thoughts, “We need to keep this castle manned. I want Tormund to hold it in my name.” They leave for the Wall in two days time.

 

“He’s never lived in a castle before.”

 

Jon is grinning when she looks at him, she does not smile, only says with a tone too firm to be truly serious, “I hope it doesn’t make him too soft to fight.”

 

Her brother laughs.

 

* * *

 

 

She sits on the covered bed, freshly made up in the simple room, it is warm and bare besides a chest at the foot of the bed and a solitary wall hanging of faded colors. Ghost lies across the end of the bed.

 

Her posture is perfect and her hands are folded in her lap, she looks expectant, politely aware but disappointed.

 

“These were his rooms,” she says.

 

He looks around again, he’d not have given a guess if she’d asked him whose quarters they had been.

 

A hand meant for the harp plucks at the linens. “And this was his bed.”

 

She looks toward the open door and then again up at where he stands just beyond it.

 

“I want to sleep in it.”

 

He makes a careful sound with his mouth and Ghost comes down from the foot of the bed and moves towards his master.

 

“He can stay.” She tells him.

 

Jon lets him settle by the empty hearth before shutting the door. It is after he’s given the hall a glance and set the bolt that she presses close against his back, teeth pressed to the shoulder of his jerkin and breasts hugging his spine.

 

Her hand holds him between the legs.

 

“You want to fuck me in it,” he voice is rough, a rasp like his wolf's tongue on her knuckles when she tends his fur.

 

She holds him tighter

 

 

 "Winter might kill us."

 

"It isn't so bad, it's not anything."

 

"I don't want to die in Winter having left things unfelt."

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I faded to black on you guys but don't worry the smoots are coming


	8. Chapter 8

It’s easy to lose her mind to what’s happened in the night, whatever night it may be; the most recent in memory, or the most horrific, or the last before she went south.

 

There’s an ache all along the inside of her thighs from his hips.

 

And, even in that there is sweetness.

* * *

 

Karhold is loud.

 

Much louder than she has expected any place to be, hushed voices and whispers and silence are what she has grown too used to.

 

Perhaps they all should scream.

 

There is something of a wait to her words when she asks Alys Karstark of her homecoming. “How do you find it to be a wife now, Lady Thenn?”

 

“He is a man. He wants, but expectation is different than performing one’s duty.”

 

“Do you wish him put away from you?”

 

“No.” The girl who is of an age she used to be once considers her words before she goes on. “I only meant that, at first, it was harder than I thought being wed, truly wed. I wept and I was…I was frightened perhaps. But, only then. My father and my brother protected me once and when they were gone I was not able to protect myself. I didn’t know anything of men before my uncle put me below in the hold, it was over a fortnight before they took me to the godswood to my cousin, I thought I was going to be executed. By then, it wasn’t so bad. But, now, I’d forgotten for a while what it had been like to be so frightened.”

 

Sansa feels she has done Alys Karstark a grave insult by having wifed her to a man some might call a savage. It was right to do but it might still have wounded.

 

But Alys Karstark is still alive and some of who have wronged her have been made dead.

 

“Signorn is a brute,” the girl says, smiling, “but, my fear distressed him. He's a good man, made of the wilds, but strong and good.”

 

“Good.”

 

“He does not come at night. He did the first night and then, he knew, he heard me weep. I had tried hard to not but…,"

 

Alys looks away from her. 

 

"Now, I do not know how to tell him he might return. I’ve seen him in the camps.”

 

“You need his men but that does not mean you need to want him.” But, she does and Sansa knows.

 

“I’m sorry for being so bold to ask you such things, My Lady.”

 

She turns to go and Sansa’s heart bleeds.

 

“This is your home, it shelters him and his men. He fucks spearwives who are yours to command now, as much as they are his. You rode to Winterfell when capture meant death or worse. We all face the same now and women can be strange things to men like yours. You have everything you need to keep him close.”

* * *

 

 

His beard had rubbed her raw across the back of her neck and her breasts are still chafed pink from it.

 

His teeth have marked her shoulder like a strand of purple jewels, like posion or a purpose.

 

In her bath she strokes fingers across the skin of her thighs with a careful drifting of touch that she tries to mimic as his own.

* * *

 

 

“I’ve missed your presence, Breanne.”

 

The woman nods, solemn and still so careful.

 

“My lady.”

 

She has arrived from the Dreadfort to meet them as they depart from Karhold for The Last Hearth and all of what had lain under the banner of a roaring giant draped in the skins of men and its own broken chains.

 

She walks through the snow of the courtyard with Brienne to watch the horses made ready for their departure.

 

“I been practicing the bow and would have your instruction and correction.”

 

Brienne follows, like she always has, albeit less stiffly than she used to.

* * *

 

The wildlings are bawdy and loud and rough but they have been tamed by the presence of woman who holds a title, a woman who has known unkindness and fear as sure as they have.

 

The whole of the Last Hearth has been well managed in the absence of honorable men and then the death of the least honorable.

 

The lords,  if not happy, then, at least content to sit in the hall. They all glance uneasily around the holdfast of what used to be a great house.

 

She has gifted it to the Wildlings on condition that it is kept usable and fortified by watchful and strong hands until it might pass to another.

 

She finds her brother’s black furs at the table just below the half pace, honorable enough and most like he chose his spot there over his rightful one at the high table.

* * *

 

Ghost had watched them at their bed play.

 

And, from his perch behind her, her brother had urged caution towards Ghost if he was not with the beast.

 

His mouth had carved over her jaw and neck. “Sometimes it’s me." 

 

He'd chuckled and laved over his spine with his tongue like a beast might.

 

"Sometimes I want to mount you like this.”

* * *

 

 

Women in heavy furs carrying axes and bows look at him in ways no southron lady would ever look upon a man.

 

It must be a hard thing, she thinks, to live beyond the Wall, dangerous and cruel. But, still, life at court had seemed a far more likely place to end up dead for something beyond one’s control.

 

So, they may look upon a man that might have made himself king.

 

She’s the only woman alive who knows the taste of his seed.

* * *

 

She had pressed her arse back towards him and he’d held her hips so gently she’d shook from the impressment of her body’s need to have him deeper inside of her, to have him spill messily all about her thighs and then take her again until she was left without thought.

* * *

 

There is talk of the Wall and the dead things that march towards them through the night and through the day.

 

A letter comes from the South, a three headed dragon pressed into the black seal with red silk as its ribbon.

* * *

 

She plays the harp for the hall, her brother’s eye catch on her fine hands, the flash of her grey woolen stockings, and the fall of her hair. Other men in the hall look but their gazes are nowhere near so bold as her brother’s.

 

He kneels before her and pledges fealty and she names him her Hand and when the war is won he will take The Last Hearth as his own keep and be given a title as Protector of the Gift.

 

She swears on the blood of their father, a man she betrayed, a man he was betrayed by.

* * *

 

He’d filled her with his fingers and made her mad with them until she’d mewled below him with limbs like wings and hair like blood sprayed about her breasts and throat.

 

He calls her sister and she sobs in such want of it, for the shameful thing that she’s chosen for herself, for the way it makes her sex slick and her blood wash through her body like Summer warmth.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait guys exciting life stuff was going on and other fic and original projects, life is good, more to come. "The Last Hearth and all of what had lain under the banner of a roaring giant draped in the skins of men and its own broken chains." The Umbers' sigil is a giant hairy beastman


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